What’s your signature scent?
The breeze falls light on my cheeks and lifts the flyaways around my ears, moving unseen like the Spirit, holding me carefully as I walk out of the crisp Autumn morning and into the last dying traces of Summer heat. I allow myself deep, slow, limitless breaths, gazing up at the sky stretching out in front of me, a vast, immeasurable sea of sunlit blue. God has said that just as the heavens cannot be measured, so also he will not consider casting his people away (Jeremiah 31:37); that if one day we fail to see the sun rise and the sun set, only then should we be concerned that he will fail to keep his promises (Jeremiah 32:20). So I can trace the boundless edges of of the sky and I can witness the rising and setting of the sun and remember the fathoms of God’s love, the sweeping reach of His grace, His promise to restore all things. I walk and I remember that God always goes with me. Because since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made (Romans 1:20).
Turning a corner, I leave the glittering asphalt and take to a dirt path worn into the grass where all our pilgrim feet have pressed out the way. An old Ford pick-up truck, soft blue, worn like sea glass and dotted here and there with coppery rust, sits parked against the curb right where the sidewalk begins. In yards and on porches I see traces of other travelers–a coffee mug perched on a porch railing beside a swing that bobs in the breeze, twinkle lights dimly shining in an arbor of grapevines, a bicycle abandoned on its side in the middle of the front yard. The wheels of a stroller clack against the asphalt as a mom and her baby make their way toward me on the opposite side of the street. She pulls off to the side and bends to jiggle a set of plastic keys affixed with ribbon to the hand rest on the front of the stroller.
A fragrance redolent with nectar and warm, ripe fruit, wafts on the breeze. I scan the landscape. I see every shape of green leaf–flat, shiny, broad, and every shade, trembling lightly and shining in the sun, but I can find no blooms or buds or fruit I imagine as the source. And yet, rich perfume often comes from unadorned vessels. This particular fragrance flows like Mary’s anointing, in one moment full and intoxicating and in the next faint and inspiring. It fills the street, the neighborhood, making the walk itself feel indulgent; the trees more elegant, the lines of street and sidewalk and yard more graceful. I feel captivated by a pleasing mystery: What life produces such a scent?
I have always been a bit enchanted by the power of smells to draw us in or turn us away, not to mention the way memories and emotions and stories absorb and carry them. Experiences and places have smells we remember. People have unique scents that lead us, when we miss them, to hold their clothes to our faces. Even when I was a little girl, I understood why God told the Israelites how to make fragrant anointing oil and incense for the temple and then forbid them to use that same combination in any other place or for any other purpose (Exodus 30: 32-33,37). I liked the idea that I when I hugged a friend or left a room, some unique memory of me could be left behind. Solomon told his beloved that her “name was like perfume poured out” (Song of Songs 1:3), and that’s exactly what I wanted.
In fifth grade, a year I felt especially unwanted among my peers, my classmate Brandi got the make-your-own perfume kit I wanted for Christmas. She jiggled a wand down in a genie-style sunny yellow plastic perfume bottle and then dabbed a bit behind her ears, telling me that her signature scent was called lemon drop. I sniffed the air, but couldn’t find a trace of the sugary citrus I expected. Maybe only soap, I thought, like those dollar-store jars of bubbles that get all over your hands and drip on the sidewalk in the summer. I didn’t tell Brandi that, though. I said, “Oh, mmm…that smells good.” I couldn’t bear to tell her that her signature scent smelled like a bunch of soapy nothing.
“I could make you one,” Brandi offered, helpfully, “you know, a signature scent.”
“That would be great,” I said, even though I was convinced that Brandi’s homemade perfume would only make me feel more invisible. If my new signature scent turned out to be as inspiring as Brandi’s signature scent, it certainly wouldn’t inspire any new friendships.
I smile now, walking around a curve in the road, remembering the way the little chunky plastic bottle felt in my hands. My signature scent that year–thanks to Brandi—smelled remarkably like dishwater.
But this smell, I do wish I could bottle. This ripening perfume makes me want to linger and savor and feast and believe in unseen and unfathomable richness; it makes me want to keep walking and breathe more deeply and search for beauty.
The Bible suggests that we have inherited our scent memory from our heavenly father, who receives our prayers like fragrant incense (Revelation 5:8), our giving as the savory scent of sacrifice (Philippians 4:18), and for whom our lives can be the pleasing aroma of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:15). What’s even more compelling to me is that these signature scents come by the creativity and resourcefulness of the Holy Spirit. I can’t make that perfume by myself. In fact, when I try, I wind up with a bunch of soapy nothing.
The aroma of Christ is the fragrance that changes lives; the one that draws us to unseen and unfathomable richness; the one that makes us eternally beautiful. His is the scent worth leaving behind. So if my name can be like perfume poured out, then let that perfume and that name be only Christ. God is an expert perfumer, after all; it’s another invisible quality of his that’s so easily understood by what he has made.
